How Couples Develop Their Own Secret Language

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In September of last year, musicians and content creators Lilianna Wilde and Sean Kolar posted a video on TikTok of unique words and phrases they developed from five years of marriage, including “chick rotiss” for rotisserie chicken and “app-a-ball spitz-ee” for Aperol spritz. They then hashtagged it #marriagelanguage. There followed millions of views and a growing number of other people contributing their own specific examples of marriage language.

Marriage language begins early in a committed relationship, with many people giving their partner affectionate nicknames, accompanied by romantic baby talk with each other. Marriage language then develops from these pet names and romantic baby talk into a larger, personalized lexicon consisting of shorthand words and phrases that refer to inside jokes, shared experiences, secret nicknames for others, and intimate activities.

Although it’s a small subset of our overall vocabulary, marriage language is pervasive, exclusive, and consequential, serving valuable functions for a long-term relationship.

Early and Often

Researchers Carol Bruess and Judy Pearson found a significant correlation between the use of couple-specific idioms and relationship satisfaction. Moreover, these idioms are developed in the early stages of long-term relationships and used more often in these early stages than later on, supporting the idea that marriage language facilitates connection when it’s most needed, as people are building their relationships. In general, this shared private vocabulary affirms a couple’s connection and emphasizes the exclusive bond they share.

Typically, marriage language is disclosed only within the close relationship, which engenders trust and intimacy. But disclosing secrets together, as with TikTok, can also strengthen the bond in a relationship.

Affirming the Connection

Independent of the specific meanings, the unique, private words and phrases of marriage language affirm the closeness of a relationship. And when they refer to a common memory, which is often the case, they reinforce the idea of a committed relationship with a shared history.

Developing Uniqueness

The specific words and phrases of marriage language are often developed through intricate and repeated interactions, another process that strengthens relationships.

An example from my own marriage illustrates this intricacy and repetition. When my nose first got sunburned while I was wearing large sunglasses, my wife said I looked like the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz with his painted red nose, a character played by the actor Ray Bolger. Afterwards, whenever my nose got sunburned, she would call it a Ray Bolger nose, which she then shortened to “Bolger” and then “Bolge,” and that became a word in our marriage vocabulary to describe anyone with a sunburned nose—a linguistic transformation so arcane and dependent on distinctively shared knowledge, we immediately felt closer whenever she said it.

Cringy Is Beautiful

Marriage language can be extravagantly cute, and potentially embarrassing for others to know. So, using it with your romantic partner builds trust, while also strengthening the romantic bond.

The pet names and romantic baby talk, which may make others cringe, signify trust in the other person and a recognition of the specialness of the relationship. One absurd example of a pet name (available online from the British sitcom Blackadder) is “pumpkinny-wumpkinny.”

Bridging Generations

Sometimes, marriage language links different generations of a family. My Danish American wife made recipes from her paternal grandmother, and one of these recipes was for frikadeller (Danish meatballs). As a couple, we referred to this dish using her Midwestern family’s mispronunciation, “freaky-dela.”

Any distinctive phrase borrowed from a parent or grandparent and repeated within a relationship serves as intergenerational marriage language.

Consistency With How Language Changes

Shortening and combining existing words to create new ones is something we all do in our natural use of language. There are several ways we shorten and combine, but primarily we clip, blend, and abbreviate—often preferring the abbreviation’s pronounceable cousin, the acronym.

Clipping is the most popular form of shortening. In centuries past, gentleman was shortened to gent, chapman to chap. More recently, cellular telephone changed to cellphone, and then cell.

We can clip out the middle, the beginning, or the end: flu for influenza, econ for economics, burbs for suburbs. The clipped versions then take over for the word, just as marriage language takes over longer versions of words and phrases. For example, in our marriage, instead of asking if we had a problem, my wife and I would say, “What’s your lem?”

Marriage Essential Reads

Two Hallmarks of an Emotionally Fulfilling Marriage

A Couple-Partnership: An Alternative to Heterosexual Marriage

Adding to Our Multiple Vocabularies

It's natural for each of us to use multiple, overlapping vocabularies. Everyone has a receptive vocabulary and an expressive vocabulary, with the receptive being larger. Many of us use different sets of words and phrases for our parents, our children, and our good friends. And we draw from these different sets of words and phrases effortlessly, without spending much attention. We do the same with the vocabulary that makes up marriage language, which effortlessly strengthens the bond in our romantic relationships.

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